A Year of Returning

As this year comes to a close, I’ve been reflecting not only on what we’ve explored in Journey to God’s Heart, but on what God has been gently shaping in us along the way.

This column was never meant to provide quick answers or polished conclusions. It has been an invitation—to notice God’s movements, to tend to the condition of our hearts, and to recognize how worship quietly forms the way we live and love.

This year, again and again, God invited us from noise to attentiveness—learning to slow down long enough to listen. Not only to Scripture, but to the Spirit’s presence in ordinary, often overlooked moments.

We were led from activity to alignment, reminded that faithfulness is not measured by how full our schedules are, but by how surrendered our hearts remain. Worship, we learned, is less about output and more about orientation.

We also explored the shift from performance to presence. Worship is not something we perfect; it is something we enter. It is proximity, not production. Nearness, not noise.

Another recurring invitation was from isolation to shared obedience—discovering that God’s heart is often revealed through community. In how we bear with one another, extend grace, and choose to walk faithfully together.

And woven through all of it was the movement from survival to fruitfulness—trusting that God brings growth even in seasons that feel thin or uncertain, and that nothing offered to Him in faith is ever wasted.

If one truth echoed throughout the year, it is this: God is not impressed by how much we do for Him, but He delights in how available we are to Him.

Worship is not something we fit into our lives; it is the posture from which everything else flows—how we serve, how we speak, how we love.

As we step into a new year, the invitation is not to try harder, but to come closer. To surpass our previous efforts not by adding more activity, but by offering God more of our attention, and one another more of our grace.

So I leave you with this question to carry forward:

What would it look like to worship God beyond what is convenient, and to serve one another from a place of intimacy rather than obligation?

May the journey continue, and may our lives keep being shaped by the heart of God, for the time for worship is now.



John 4:23-24 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.

• Joann Montes